www.alkoholpolitik.ch

Our “Alcohol’s harm to others” conference took place on 3 June in Edinburgh. Around 100 delegates attended to hear from expert speakers and workshop leaders on the impact of excessive drinking on people other than the drinker, with a particular focus on children and young people.
Presentations can be downloaded below and the conference report will be available soon. (Source: Alcohol Reports, 06/10/11)

However the report also finds some variations, suggesting further research and monitoring. Findings and recommendations include:
* The relationship between alcohol misuse and poor sexual health outcomes means there is an urgent need for the integration of health services for young people. It should be routine for professionals to address sexual health and alcohol issues simultaneously.
* Campaigns/services that aim to address teenage conception should include alcohol consumption in young men as well as young women, since alcohol misuse in both sexes independently predicts teenage pregnancy and sexual infections
* Attention needs to be paid to local factors that may play a role in enhancing risk of conception among groups of young people. (Source: Alcohol Policy UK, 06/09/11)

A public high school in Long Island, New York is opening an in-house drug and alcohol abuse clinic. According to Daytop Treatment Services, which will run the clinic, it is the first such facility in New York State and possibly in the United States.
Reuters reports that the clinic is opening in response to a jump in substance abuse among students. It will be housed at the William Floyd High School in Mastic Beach, NY, and will open in August. The clinic will provide counseling, but will not dispense methadone or other medications. (Source: Join Together, 06/09/11)

Alcohol use, depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder together account for 45 percent of disabilities among young people ages 10 to 24 worldwide, about four times as much as that caused by unintentional injuries, according to a study of data from the World Health Organization.

The study researchers added up years of healthy living that were lost due to a disability and death. The Los Angeles Times reports that the study found alcohol accounted for 7 percent of lost healthy years. The article notes that the study is the first of its kind to give a comprehensive picture of young people’s global health. (Source: Join Together, 06/08/11)

A regulation partly overruled by the Council of State would have helped prevent the recent deaths of several Russian tour guides from consuming unlicensed alcohol, the president of Turkey’s alcohol regulatory agency has said.
The decision of the Council of State was only an interim judgment and did not reflect the final verdict, said the Tobacco and Alcohol Market Regulatory Agency, or TAPDK, chief.
“We deeply care about the arrangements in our regulation to prevent [such] deaths,” said TAPDK President Mehmet Küçük. He added that the recent deaths resulting from the consumption of unlicensed alcohol had demonstrated the importance of alcohol being sold by licensed vendors in predetermined locations. … (Source: Alcohol Reports, 06/07/11) hurriyetdailynews.com, 06/06/11

Since the term was coined about 40 years ago, fetal alcohol syndrome has slowly become recognized as a public health issue. Alicestine October reports from South Africa’s Western Cape province, which has the highest reported rate in the world.
“When I was pregnant with my son I drank a lot – mostly on weekends,” says Marion Williams, a 45-year-old mother who lost two of her five children in childbirth.
Williams lives in one of South Africa’s famous wine-growing areas in the Western Cape. She started drinking as a teenager and was taken out of school, she suspects, to work to buy wine for her parents. … (Source: Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2011;89:398–399. doi:10.2471/BLT.11.020611)

Alcohol Concern Cymru have released a briefing paper on alcohol and older people:
Hidden harm? Alcohol and older people in Wales [pdf]
An Alcohol Concern page states:
‚To make sure older people in Wales receive the support they need to enjoy alcohol healthily, Alcohol Concern is recommending that professionals working with older people need to be aware of alcohol misuse; better joint working is needed between local older people’s services and alcohol treatment services; and research is needed into whether current unit guidance and screening methods for alcohol misuse are relevant to older people.‘ (Source: Alcohol Policy UK, 06/06/11)

Drinking motives have a prominent role in cognitive models of adolescent and adult alcohol decision-making … The complementary construct of motivation not to drink has received less attention. …
We examined how abstinence motives interacted with drinking motives and alcohol expectancies to predict alcohol consumption in samples of US high school students (N > 2,500).
Nondrinking motives predicted lower rates of lifetime and current alcohol use. Motives not to drink interacted with specific drinking motives, like social and coping motives, and alcohol expectancies to predict certain aspects of drinking behavior. For example, motives not to drink had the greatest impact on youth with weaker social motivations.
Findings highlight the distinction between motives not to drink and other alcohol-related cognitions in predicting adolescent alcohol consumption.
This work not only supports the utility of this construct in developing models of youth alcohol-related decision-making but also has implications for prevention programming. (Source: Alcohol Reports, 06/04/11)

A third of drug addicts or problem drinkers in treatment have childcare responsibilities and the lives of these children are much improved when providers and children’s services get together early on to ensure the whole family gets the support it may need.
A new practical guide issued today (Wednesday, 1st June) by the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA) says those responsible for drink and drug treatment must take a wider, more preventative approach, identifying early on when families need help as well as protecting children from neglect and harm. (Source: Medical News Today, 06/01/11)

International News from Sweden, UK, USA, Canada, Malaysia, India etc. (Source: Alcohol Reports, 05/30/11)